It's Amazing What Trash Makes it Into the International Press

I'm talking about the Christine O'Donnell almost-one-night-stand story. Now, I have little sympathy with O'Donnell as a candidate, as she has a Palinesque combination of religious rigidity and complete ignorance and incompetence, but this is horrible. Putting aside that this was, at least from the original Gawker story, a he-said, she-said (the pictures prove nothing other than she was likely drunk and wearing a ladybug costume), she didn't even actually do anything. I'm as partial to holier-than-thou polls being revealed to be fooling around secretly as much as the next guy, but this isn't even really one of those. In the story, she outright refused to have intercourse, and while it seems from the man's account she wanted to do... other things, they didn't even do that because apparently the man had watched too many adult movies and was turned off by women who didn't ape adult movie stars personal grooming habits.

Even if all that is true, it's still a very weak case for hypocrisy. True, what she apparently and allegedly wanted to do was against her ultra-strict anti-masturbation corner of Catholicism, and some of it was no-doubt against the rules even for married couples according to that viewpoint (I know because I used to be of that mindset, years ago; under that system, if the semen ends up somewhere where it can't even theoretically meet an egg, then its a sin--even if the woman is already pregnant or otherwise infertile). But still, even if it's true: she didn't actually do anything, she outright refused intercourse, and it was apparently an isolated incident. This doesn't even come close to being worthy of publication. Heck, even they had done it, I'd say it still doesn't; if she had a pattern of secretly screwing around or having a lengthy affair, then that would be a different matter entirely given the substantive hypocrisy that would reveal. An isolated incident while drunk doesn't qualify (nor does being drunk; I think drunkeness is listed as a sin in the Catechism, but it's not one ever, ever emphasized even in very strict, ultra-orthodox Catholic circles; Catholics are not baptists).

No SGU Review as of yet

Alas, Hulu stopped showing it in a timely fashion, even going so far as to make you wait 30 days to view new episodes. I'm not paying $1.99 a pop for SGU, either. I'll true to catch it on Comcast On Demand, but that is much less convenient for me than watching it on the computer.

While I can't comment, yet, on the content of the episode, SGU's ratings have sunk to a new franchise low with under a million viewers. No, I don't see a third season.

Some numbers just shouldn't be trumpeted

Point in case, Lulu.com's iBookstore numbers:

As of August 1st:

• Over 1,000 Lulu titles available on the iBookstore


• Over 5,000 Lulu eBooks have been purchased through the iBookstore


• Over $23,000 in Lulu author royalties paid from iBookstore sales

That's over a period of almost four months. They might as well say in that box: You'd make more money selling CDRs with PDFs of your book on the street corner, or publishing your book on Blogger with adsense.

My point is merely about the rather mystifying decision to publicize those pathetic numbers. Why the numbers are so low is another question entirely. Part of it is no doubt that Lulu.com is essentially a self-publishing platform and therefore is mainly, if not entirely, niche and amateur content. But another big factor is that the Apple iBookstore isn't selling much of anything to anyone. Moneyquote:

In August, author Joe Konrath revealed he was selling 200 books a day for the Kindle and only 100 per month on the iBookstore. This has now accumulated to 70,000 Amazon sales and just 400 sales via the iBookstore. [ed. note: emphasis added]

Stargate Universe: Awakening

The episode was good, but it could have been better. I loved that they introduced another alien species. Hopefully they will learn how to speak English and will become a major antagonist, or ally. Part of SGU's problem is that, lacking a major antagonist or inhabited planets with Stargates, there's nothing for our heroes to do except stay on that "boring old ship" as one commenter put it. Or worse, use those damned communications stones.

On the downside, they seem to be falling back into the daytime soap pacing that killed season 1.0 (evident in the pilot, which would have been too long if it were only a two-parter). C'mon, how long can Rush keep the damned bridge a secret? That really needs to be resolved in the next episode before it a) starts to piss us off and b) starts beggaring credulity that he doesn't get followed, or that someone doesn't try to enter on their own. And the sooner the how gets some real direction, the better, as it must when the whole crew knows about, and is manning, the bridge.

Lifehacker is awesome

Where else do you get a how-to on making secret compartments in books quickly and efficiently?

SGU: Aftermath I can't believe I didn't see it

The scene were Young strangles the Lucian Alliance dude almost to death is a direct ripoff of when Adama did the same thing to Athena (right after Boomer, another Number Eight, had shot him and he had to be operated on by Nurse Sharpspoon Nobedsidemanner because, oh never mind)  on Battlestar Galactica. Like most of SGU's multitudinous ripoffs of BSG, this one just doesn't come out right. Young just comes off looking, as Rush tells Angel Whoever, mentally unstable (even, and this is the important part, compared to everyone else).

I think the problem is that his rage, ostensibly at the loss of his near-term unborn child, was too diffused. From what I gathered from the episodes, no one intentionally shot TJ, she just got in the way when one of the marines decided to start a fire-fight. And the guy Young strangled was just some random dude, not even (as far as we know, or Young knows) one of the guys in the room at that time. Nor was he an identical copy of the guy who shot TJ.

MGM just went under

This can't be good news for Stargate Universe, with it's disappointing ratings. Or could it? It sounds like restructuring could free the company from limbo, so who knows?

XMarks Rescue/Buyout likely according to CEO

It's fun to speculate who it might be. Honestly, I hope it's not Google or Microsoft. It would be better if it were someone like Yahoo who doesn't make a browser themselves. That would make it most likely that the cross-browser syncing would survive, which is my favorite feature of XMarks. It makes using more than one browser really viable.

The Disappearing Bees Solved

Apparently Davros had nothing to do with it. Drat.

Stargate Universe: Aftermath

Another excellent episode. Of course Enterprise: Season 4 tells us that improved quality doesn't necessarily mean an escape from bad ratings and cancellation (which the numbers from last week's premiere seem to indicate will probably be SGU's fate), but it's still a treat for viewers while it's on.

Unlocking Destiny's controls is a breath of fresh air. As is the mention of the stones without actually having them in use onscreen. They were the bane of the season 1.0; I wished several times that they'd get airlocked, though I have to admit that they were put to good use in Sabotage and the Lucian Alliance arc. It looks like the show's getting it's footing.

Rush proves that he is NOT fit to take command, despite last week's Crowning Moments of Awesome. Unfortunately for the crew of Destiny, Colonel Young proves that he's even less fit than I thought before. It's bad enough to be criminally negligent, as his total refusal to defend the gate against the Lucian alliance was. Remember that a Stargate is a highly defensible location. If he wasn't prepared to evacuate the atmosphere, he damned-well should have had soldiers shooting whatever came through. Anyway, now he also proves that he's out of control be almost killing one of the Alliance rioters with his bare hands by chocking when doing so undermines quelling the riot rather than aided it (he could have been attacked, for example). Deciding to dump them all on the is defensible, but strangling a random dude is just crazy. As Rush points out to Angel Gloria (which is what I'll call her since Rush's establishment as a Scottish version of Gaius Baltar without the horny is almost complete). Or was it Angel Franklin?

Anyway, pity they didn't order debrainwashed Telford to take command immediately.

Update: More crappy ratings. They'd better start planning to bring some kind of closure with the Season 2 finale, because at this rate there won't be a third season.

Security Now has the Scoop on Two Troubling Bills

This is a very important Security Now to watch.



The first bill, COICA, which would allow the justice department to blacklist websites that infringe copyrights, mandating they be removed from DNS by ISPs, can be studied in more depth here. The other hasn't been proposed yet; it's expected to be proposed next year.

One URL Shortener to Rule Them All

I'm starting to think that goo.gl will be that. It has the tremendous advantage of being part of Google, which means that it will probably never go away, at least if people start using it en masse. There's all sorts of potential for integration with Chrome, which would be to their advantage. I'm using it from now on. I really don't see a purpose, or a real business model, for the bit.lys of the world. This isn't something that really needs to exist on its own.

A Quick Review of Stargate Universe: Intervention

Overall I thought it lived up to the much improved standards of Season 1.5. The resolutions to the cliffhangers were well-done, Rush's ultimate solution was awesome Good on him for having the guts to stare down the Lucian alliance; he's transitioned from a jerkass genius to someone who should be in charge. Young proved he wasn't up to the challenge when he failed to evacuate the oxygen in the gateroom, trading several lives and potentially the whole crew and the ship itself for Telford's (and, he thought, Rush's). He must have known that more than two of his people would certainly die, and everyone might die, if he didn't block their access to the ship at the point of entry.

I didn't like the parts back on the Faith planet, but then I didn't like the episode "Faith" at all. I object to the whole purpose, which was to write Alaina Huffman's pregnancy into the show. They should have found another way, even if it meant sidelining her for the duration of her pregnancy (especially since her getting pregnant by accident highlights just how absurd body-swapping sex is, especially for the women who might find themselves pregnant by someone they never met; but don't get me started on that). Failing that, they should have had the guts to have her unborn child die outright during the battle against the Alliance rather than to continue with this quasi-religious all-powerful aliens mythology and have the baby possibly have been spirited away to the Faith planet while still being dead on Destiny (what's up with that, anyway?). Bad things happen when bad guys invade and the commander is a colossal moron.

Oh, and I think Camille was a bit over-the-top emotionally. Unless something horrible was done to her by the alliance that we don't know about yet, but I doubt that given their inability to kill off TJ's baby. This isn't Battlestar Galactica no matter how much it wishes it were. I noticed she was a bit over the top in this regard back during the torture fake-out  a couple episodes back (and I was on her and Scott's side, BTW; Scott struck just the right tone). I hope they aren't making her into a wimp.